


Coincidences.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Ghost Obi-Wan Kenobi, Force-Sensitive Han Solo, Gen, Jedi Han Solo, Jedi Leia Organa, Jedi Luke Skywalker, Master & Padawan Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:53:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23174239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: Corellia is a world haunted by ghosts.  And Han has lived a life that makes him susceptible to being haunted.   So he is not altogether surprised to hear a familiar voice in his ear, not so very long after its owner left life behind and stepped into death like walking through a doorway.Hello there.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker & Han Solo, Leia Organa/Han Solo
Comments: 39
Kudos: 249





	Coincidences.

There is more to this galaxy than what he can percieve, Han knows, there is more to the universe that he has managed to parse so far. He grew up on the streets of Corellia, he has heard the stories of white spectres with black eyes that follow strangers on back to their homes, of thin voices that cry near the lakeshores at night. 

Corellia is a world haunted by ghosts. And Han has lived a life that makes him susceptible to being haunted. 

So he is not altogether surprised to hear a familiar voice in his ear, not so very long after its owner left life behind and stepped into death like walking through a doorway. 

_Hello there._

Han remembers that voice. The old man. White hair and beard, a keen look in his eyes. Luke’s friend, the one who had sacrificed himself to help them escape the Death Star. He’s grateful, he is, but he’d prefer to avoid the kind of postmortem conversations he is aware that Luke has experienced.

The others are asleep in their bunks; only Han is awake right now, stretched out in the pilot’s seat of the _Falcon,_ one leg folded across his other knee. This would seem to be Luke’s jurisdiction, as the galaxy’s resident Jedi master. But he can take care of himself, and Han might even be just a bit lonely. Enough to answer back instead of pretending he hasn’t heard the voice.

“I don’t know how to break it to you, but you’re dead,” Han says.

The voice sounds amused. _Oh, I am aware, thank you,_ it says rather primly. 

“Then you’re dialing up the wrong frequency,” Han replies. “Luke’s asleep just now. I’ll let him know you stopped by.”

_Oh no, I haven’t got it wrong,_ the voice says. _It’s you I wanted to speak to, Han._

He finds himself sitting up straighter, his boots on the floor. Called to attention, like a cadet. “Me?” asks Han, bemused. “Why’s that?”

_We have something in common, I believe,_ the old man’s voice continues.

“Our good looks, I expect,” Han shoots back.

_Beyond that._

“Go haunt someone else.”

_The Force draws me to you._

Han shakes his head. “The Force doesn’t mean anything to me. That’s to do with Luke. And Leia, now.” He thinks of his wife, asleep in their bunk, her heavy braid trailing across her shoulder, and of Luke, who thinks she has the same talent he possesses for floating rocks.

The voice is certainly amused now. _Why do you think I chose you to be our pilot on Tatooine? The Force draws together those who can hear its call, and I was drawn to you, just as surely as I was brought to Luke._

Han shakes his head again. “That was nothing,” he mutters. “Chance. Bad luck, maybe.”

_The Force goes by many names._

“You hear me, old man? Just a coincidence,” he says, and the voice seems to politely acknowledge their differing opinions on the matter, and drifts silently away.

* * *

_She needs to be trained,_ Luke had said, and Leia had said, _The New Republic needs me to be stronger._ No one had asked for Han’s opinion on the matter, and anyway, how could Han speak out against the idea? He’s seen what Luke can do with the Force he cherishes, knows what miracles Leia could manage with the right training. All he has to offer is his ship, to help them get to a world where they can hide long enough for Leia to study, and his support. For Luke and Leia, this might appear to be a sensible plan; for Han and Chewbacca, this is teetering on the verge of madness. 

The _Millennium Falcon_ is making another jump through hyperspace, another one of many routes carefully calculated by Han and checked by Chewbacca to appear random, to prevent Imperial detection. They’ve learned caution, these past few years, after too many close calls to count.

Luke spends his time training Leia. Han can’t help but overhear his lessons. It’s not his fault, he tries to keep back, give them space, but the _Falcon_ isn’t so big. He overhears things, picks things up, even without meaning to. Luke is leading Leia in what he calls a basic meditation, simply seeking out the Force. They sit near one another on the floor, knees brushing, heads bent together. 

Han gets caught in watching them. It’s funny, how alike they can seem, though they did not grow up together. The way they both tilt their heads to the side to puzzle over a question, or the way their eyes flash when roused to anger. It is these gestures and actions, more than any physical resemblance, that makes them seem like brother and sister. 

“Close your eyes,” Luke is saying softly, “reach out with your feelings. Find the Force.”

A tiny frown appears in between Leia’s eyes. “I can’t do it,” she snaps. 

“Yes, you can,” Luke replies with his newfound patience. Strange to see in the kid, Han thinks. He can remember a time when Luke had been railed against everything he could not understand, when he had rushed foolhardily towards what he thought was right, and was furious when he was held back from a fight. 

Luke’s learned that patience in these past few years. Settled into himself, easy and contained when before, he had been raw adrenaline and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. It’s a good look on him, Han thinks. Suits him.

Leia shakes her head mutely. Han can feel her agitation. She pushes herself hard, she always has. And it’s difficult for her to admit that this is not easy.

“Relax,” Luke says softly. “You don’t have to fight it, Leia. I know that’s what you do—that’s what you’ve had to do all your life, I know fighting is what you’re good at. But this is something you don’t have to fight. Just let it be.”

Leia drops her head to her chest, the back of her neck vulnerable somehow beneath the braid wound around her head.

“Just breathe,” Luke is saying, and Leia sighs deep and long. Han can see how she is relaxing, so unusual for his spitfire wife. “That’s all you have to do. Just breathe.” 

His voice is almost a whisper. “Can you feel it? It’s right here, between you and me. It’s always been right here. You don’t have to do anything. Just let it be.”

The line between her eyes fades away, and then a faint smile moves across her lips. It’s such a personal thing, he feels abruptly like he shouldn’t be watching.

Han looks away.

* * *

He’s in the cockpit, watching the stars streak across his viewscreen. Hyperspace can almost put him in a trance, the way the ship reverberates through space, how the lights blink past. When he can’t sleep, he’ll find himself here, sitting in his seat at the controls even when there’s no need for it, just to be able to see the stars. 

Han leans back in his chair and props his boots on the dash and lets himself drift.

It soothes him as nothing else can do. In a moment like this, he can almost see what Luke talks so much about, how it’s all connected, every star, every planet, every being, energies touching and sparking against each other, creating something so bright he can almost see it.

The voice is chuckling in his ear. _See,_ it murmurs. _I told you we had something in common._

Han startles back awake, reaching out to touch the controls on the panels before him, anything to ground him. His boots drop back to the floor.

Han scratches at the beard he’s started to grow these past few days, and shakes himself back into alertness.

* * *

  
  


Luke is studying the star charts. Han’s pointing out various worlds that might suit them, Raris Prime, all but uninhabited, or Alcostis, unimportant to anyone even in the Empire, but Luke shakes his head.

“None of those,” Luke says. “None of those _feel_ right.”

“Dagobah, then. You trained at Dagobah,” Han protests. “Why not Leia?”

“Dagobah doesn’t have what Leia needs.”

“Then where to, _Master Luke_?” Han asks impatiently.

“The Force will be my guide,” Luke says serenely, and Han has to roll his eyes. He’s Luke's oldest friend now. He's obligated. 

All the same, he watches closely when Luke closes his eyes and holds out his hand, palm up, fingers curling over the miniature planets of the star-chart. He can see how Luke is falling out of the moment and into something bigger, something more. It’s that distant look on his face. Smoothed over. Like he’s tapped into a vein of peace. 

The planets slip through Luke’s open fingers, one small blue-lit world after another. Han watches, mesmerized. Like watching the rain fall, one drop at a time.

_This one_ , something whispers inside of him.

He knows the moment before it happens what planet Luke’s fingers will close around.

Luke opens his eyes. “Here,” he says. He looks down at the world he’s clutching between his fingers. “This is the place.”

“Okay,” says Han. He feels shaken. He feels—larger inside than he had been before, like a sudden wind had swept through him and cleared out the old rubble and grime from all these years he’s been surviving, alive but barely living, and left him cleaned out, hollow but not empty. There’s something left inside him, even after that startling feeling passes. He hasn’t got a word for it, even though he speaks a handful of languages and can curse in several more. 

Clean, Han thinks, he feels clean. And he is not surprised when the _Falcon_ touches down on the planet Luke has chosen and sees vast expanses of prairie grass, growing tall and brown, faintly purple where the grasses are tipped with lavender. A brisk wind moves across the fields, setting the grasses to swaying back and forth. 

Beside him, Luke is taking deep breaths of air, sucking it into his lungs like he’s never tasted anything so good. Han remembers the hot-sour taste of Tatooine air and dust clinging to his mouth long after he’d left the planet, and he wonders if maybe he hasn’t.

“Fresh,” Luke says. “Clean, and fresh. A good place to begin again. Don’t you think?”

"Yeah," Han agrees, "real nice, kid." And that's where they settle.

* * *

Han can’t help but think that for all Luke’s talk about teaching, Jedi training looks more like playing. He and Chewbacca are hard at work repairing the Falcon’s latest disaster— a set of fused power couplings on the optical transmitter—while Luke and Leia push a feather back and forth like children.

"That's what we are," Luke had said to that. "Children, in the Force."

_You feel the connection._

The voice appears inside his head. 

"You again," Han mutters.

_See? I told you. We are more alike than you want to believe._

“Be quiet for once, will you,” he says, but there’s no real heat in his voice. He is too busy watching the feather float between Luke and Leia, finally settling down between them. To Han’s untrained eye, it seems as though a brisk wind batters the feather first to Luke, then back to Leia, swirling over her head and landing sedately at her feet before blowing off again.

"Hey kids," Han hollers at them, "quit playing, and help me with dinner." 

Leia snorts but rises from the ground. " _Playing_ ," she says, dangerously.

“Wait 'til we get to levitating ships,” is all Luke replies. "Then you'll see some real fun."

“What about levitating ships,” Han shouts after him, but Luke, that aggravating kid, just shoots him a beatific smile and keeps walking away. “Oh, no way, pal. Not _my_ ship. You’re not gonna lay a finger on the _Falcon._ ”

Leia pats his shoulder soothingly. “Don’t worry, dear,” she says. “We won’t.”

* * *

They pitch a camp on the grassland, building a fire at night to cook and eat their rations around. Night comes and Chewbacca is long gone, headed out with a wide grin and his crossbow, on the hunt, Han assumes, for tomorrow night’s dinner. There’s game around here, and Chewbacca prefers to be on the move. If he can't be moving in the air, then he'll cover some ground.

Luke is showing Leia how to cool down the burning embers with the Force, then how to push heat back into the coals. Han is curled on his side around the fire, where he can keep an eye on the two of them, absently plucking at the tough grasses underneath his hands and weaving the strands around his fingers. 

The voice slides into his head, unannounced. _Is it so strange to consider the possibility that you might also have what Luke and Leia possess?_

He takes a moment to respond. “Not strange,” he answers finally. “ _Strange_ is what I do for a living. This is—something else.”

The voice continues, _You rode out in a Hoth snowstorm, prepared to stake your life and Luke’s on nothing more than a feeling. And you found him, even when sensors and droids could not locate his whereabouts. How, then, do you explain that?_

Han finds himself remembering. Luke’s saber in his hand, the bright song that flashed in his ears as he ignited it to burn through his tauntaun’s hide. A Jedi’s weapon. 

Just a weapon, Han reminded himself, shrugging it off. He’s good with weapons, always has been, just picks them up and just by touch alone he knows how to work them. Another coincidence.

“Yeah, well,” Han says. “I’m just a lucky guy, you know.” 

_I have often told my students that luck is just another way of describing the Force,_ the voice replies, and Han shakes his head, lets the grasses he’s picked be blown away by the cool night breeze.

“I’m not like him,” he argues. “Luke. I can’t be like him.”

_Why is that?_ the voice counters, and Han wants to look away, but where can you look away from someone who isn’t there?

He finds himself stumbling over his answer.

“I couldn’t be a Jedi. I'm not made from the right stuff. Luke, you know, he’s a hero—and Leia, too. I’ve seen how good Luke is. How good they both are. I’m not like that. Good, I mean. Never have been.”

Han can hear his voice break. That familiar presence kindly and considerately leaves him alone with his thoughts. 

But the voice comes back later, as it always does, to have the final word.

_You could be._

* * *

Leia looks more and more like a Jedi every day she spends training with Luke. It’s not just her appearance, though it does make a difference. Her practical jumpsuits have been replaced with the bell-sleeved tunics and flowing robes of a Jedi, in charcoal grays and whites. It’s more the look of calmness on her face, appearing more and more to take the place of anger and frustration. 

She’s not fighting it anymore, Han realizes. She’s become a Jedi, well and truly. 

She belongs to the Force now, he finds himself thinking morosely, not that Leia has ever _belonged_ to him. But she had belonged _with_ him, once. Now she’s a part of something larger than their marriage, something greater than Han could ever be. He feels - not quite forgotten. Outgrown, maybe.

Leia comes to him one night, arms winding around his neck and pressing her lips against the side of his head briefly. “Can I ask something of you, Han?” she asks softly.

“Anything, princess,” he says, gruff but meaning it.

Her voice is hesitant, but firm. “Will you take down my hair?”

Han reaches out, places his hand on the top of her head. Feeling the smooth hair underneath his fingertips. He hesitates, knowing what it means to her. “You sure?” he asks.

Her voice is confident. “Yes.”

He unravels the heavy braids wound around her head. Braids of mourning, in the Alderaanian tradition, for her dead parents, for her dead friends, for her destroyed world. She has kept a mourning braid in her hair ever since Alderaan’s death. 

Han had not seen Leia grieve over all that she had lost until after the second Death Star, after the galaxy had calmed down. And then, like a puppet with its strings snapped, she had appeared to collapse. There had been days when all he could do was hold her in his arms, and pray to all the little Corellian gods he knew of that he could find a way to reach her. To help her.

_It’s all I want,_ he had begged. _I won’t ask for anything else. Just let me help her._

Now Leia holds herself together with bands of adamant. Han knows it for what it is. The self-control of a Jedi.

Han combs out her dark hair with his fingers until it hangs to her hips in waves. 

“Why now?” he dares to ask.

She looks away from him, at something he can’t see.

“There is no death,” Leia recites, as if to herself. “Only the Force.” 

* * *

One day, when Leia returns panting and sweating from her run across the grasslands, Luke hands her a small wooden box, carved out of junip wood. 

Han is there to watch her open it. The little frown makes a comeback just above her nose. Han’s glad to see it. Serenity is a wonderful thing, if you can find it, but he has missed his stubborn princess. He’s pleased to know she’s still in there.

“What’s this?” Leia asks, taking out a small crystal.

“I thought it might do,” Luke answers, “for your first lightsaber. It’s not quite the same as Ilum, the texts I’ve read, but—”

Leia throws her arms around his neck, and for once, Luke isn't looking like a Jedi master. He lets out a whoosh of breath and laughs.

* * *

Luke takes his lightsaber apart, instructing Leia on how to arrange the components, then he puts it back together.

“I found the components for this lightsaber on Tatooine,” Luke says. “In Ben’s old home. There were other hilts, all the pieces I would need to build my lightsaber. And there was this box, filled with crystals. They must have belonged to other Jedi, once. You can feel the unique presence in each one.”

  
  
Leia takes out the crystals and arranges them on a cloth. “I can _feel_ them,” she says, sounding awed. “The Jedi these crystals belonged to. This one—a woman with short blonde hair. She carried a blue lightsaber. She was fierce. Loyal.” 

Her fingers brush across another. “And this one belonged to another woman. Her eyes were green and gold. Her crystal laughs the way she did.”

“Is there one that feels right to you?” Luke asks her, and slowly Leia’s hand moves back to the first crystal that caught her attention. But she hesitates.

“How did you chose?” Leia asks. 

Luke runs his hand down the hilt of his lightsaber. “I opened the box,” he says, remembering, “and I thought I felt someone there with me. Guiding my hand. And when I touched this one, it felt right somehow.”

Leia makes a noncommittal noise, one Han has heard her make in various meetings and diplomatic functions. 

“There’s no right choice, Leia,” Luke tells her, a hint of exasperation coming out in his voice, and Han grins at that. 

“This one, then,” Leia murmurs, selecting the first crystal and cradling it in her palm. 

Luke sighs in relief. “Good choice.”

He shows Leia how to put the components back together, how the crystal focuses the energy from the power cell to create the blade and redirect it back on itself, a feedback look of energy. Andwhen the lightsaber is reassembled, Luke hands it towards Han.

Han gives him a questioning look, his signature move: _Who, me_? 

“Check it for me,” Luke says to his questioning look, so Han takes up the lightsaber. 

He’s gotten used to handling Jedi weapons since Hoth. Luke’s lightsaber no longer buzzes in his hand, startling him. Now when he touches the hilt, the lightsaber only hums in recognition. 

“Just me,” he tells the saber absently, and the saber agrees. Han has become familiar to _it_ , the lightsaber seems to think, not the other way around.

He presses the ignition button, and Luke’s green blade flashes into existence.

* * *

Leia spends days working on her lightsaber, well into the night. She finally stumbles into their bunk, exhausted, spent, her power cells and hilt piece and bits of wiring still scattered across the worktable. Even in the dim lights of the _Falcon’_ s blue lights, Han can see them. _Hear_ them, even, like a song someone is whistling almost out of earshot. He can’t sleep until he gets up and covers the parts with a polishing cloth. 

One crystal flashes at him, bright and eager. “Hush,” Han says sternly, shaking a severe finger at it.

The song settles and dies down.

The voice is in his ear. 

_I suppose this is all merely chance, to you._

“Isn’t anything?” Han asks aloud. “I don’t even know how I came to have any of this. Winning a ship of my own. Pulling rank in the Rebellion. _Her_. I couldn’t have gotten any of this if I had been trying for it.”

_And that is your first lesson,_ says Obi-Wan Kenobi. Han can see him now, a flickering blue light appearing in the corner of the _Falcon_. _And your great strength, Han. You have never merely_ tried.

* * *

  
  


Leia is perched on a flat rock, in the mountainous region north of the planet's grassland, eyes closed, hand out. Luke is the picture of Jedi serenity, hands folded into the sleeves of his robe, levitating several feet off the ground, looking down at Leia thoughtfully. as she levitates a boulder into the air. Han can see the lines around the corners of her eyes pinch from the strain.

Han is crouching by the _Falcon_ , ostensibly checking those optical power couplings again. His boots crunch on the pebbles underfoot.

Leia is haloed by a ring of rocks and boulders that hover around her head. He watches his wife and marvels at her strength, her ability to dive into unfamiliar territory without hesitation. 

Han doesn't want to be left behind. Maybe there is a place where he can meet her halfway.

_The Force is strong with her,_ the voice remarks.

"Hmm," Han replies. He is looking down at the ground, the pebbles around his boots. He can’t help but flick his wrist experimentally, and the pebbles by his boots scatter sideways. He grins to himself, can’t help it, and twists his fingers, coaxing a handful of pebbles up in the air and into his hand.

"Not bad, for a beginner," says Luke's voice from his midair perch. 

When Han looks up, Luke is smiling at him. 


End file.
